Tom Perez

Thomas Edward "Tom" Perez (7 October 1961-) was US Secretary of Labor from 23 July 2013 to 20 January 2017, succeeding Hilda Solis and preceding Alexander Acosta, as well as Chair of the Democratic National Committee from 25 February 2017, succeeding Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Biography
Thomas Edward Perez was born in Buffalo, New York on 7 October 1961 to a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. He received a B.A. in international relations and political science from Brown University in 1983, and he received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987. Perez worked as a federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division from 1989 to 1995, and he worked as Massachusetts Democratic Party senator Ted Kennedy's adviser from 1995 to 1998. From 2001 to 2007, Perez was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, teaching clinical law and law and health.

Political career
In 2002, Perez was elected to the county council of Montgomery County, Maryland, becoming the first Hispanic council member. He opposed the privatization of non-profit healthcare providers and campaigned for affordable prescription drugs, and he became Maryland's Secretary of Labor in January 2007 under Governor Martin O'Malley. On 31 March 2009, President Barack Obama named him Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, overseeing the first hate crime conviction under the law, eradicating discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, and increasing the training of law enforcement officials to deal with hate crimes. He also spoke out against police discrimination, voter ID laws, and educational discrimination. From 2013 to 2017, he served as Secretary of Labor, and he was anything but a consensus pick; his appointment exacerbated the divisions between the Democrats and the Republican Party. On 25 December 2016, he announced his candidacy to become the new Democratic National Committee chair, arguing that the Democrats needed to go to the suburbs and rural America and talk to people to form a fifty-state strategy, the lack of which had caused for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to lose the 2016 presidential election. Perez was seen as an establishment and "machine" candidate, as he was another Obama administration leftover and not a member of the growing grassroots movement within the Democratic Party. He defeated anti-establishment Democrat Keith Ellison 235 votes to 200 votes on 25 February 2017, becoming the first Hispanic to become DNC chair. Rather than focus on ways to reform the Democrats, Perez gave speeches on how to fight against Donald Trump and the Republicans, further dividing the country rather than helping his own party.